What Instructional Tools Should I Consider in an LMS?

Video Transcription

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you are having a wonderful day today. Today, we're going to go ahead and look at what instructional tools you want to consider as you begin choosing or selecting your learning management system.

For today's quote, I have chosen one which states "In a conflict, he doesn't win who has the most weapons, but who knows the best use for them." This is really important when we look at learning management systems. It's not necessarily about the best possible tools that are in there, but the learning management system that has the tools that you can best use to help encourage success in your classroom. By the end of the lesson today, you will be able to identify the additional course features and materials within learning management systems that impact your selection of those systems.

So let's go ahead and take a look at what are some learning management system instructional tools that you want to see. There are many additional features that you will find and many additional materials that can help impact your selection. Here are some of those options.

First and foremost, you're going to want to look for something that has robust course features. What we're looking at here is the ability to really create those assessments that you need for your students. You want to see that you are able to assess them in a number of different ways on the material that they are learning.

Additionally, you want to look for the ease in including various course calendars, ways for students to keep track of that information, but also the ability to upload course material in multiple formats. You want to look at something that allows you to upload text, as well as rich text, as well as Microsoft documents, audio and visual elements, various HTML or Java based widgets, PDF, zip files. All of the different means by which you could have that material, you want to be able to get that material into the learning management system and into the hands of your students.

You want to see that certain learning management systems have the opportunity for things like badges and ways for students to earn those points as they are continuing to learn the information that you have, as well as students to create those personal profile pages. All of these can really help ensure that your students are actively engaging with the content in that learning management system.

You also want to see that there are various grade book options. You want to see that it's possible for students to be able to include online and offline assessments, so that you are ensuring that any material that they do in the learning management system is being collected, as well as you can still give some more traditional offline assessments that you can then incorporate into that learning management system, so that all the material can be readily seen together.

Finally, you're going to want to see that you have a lot of options for additional features and materials that are going to help you with those communication elements. Some learning management systems have the opportunity for email notifications, so that you can readily contact the various parents or students in your classroom to make sure that they are seeing all of the elements that you want them to see.

There's also the opportunity to be able to really focused in on those announcement capabilities. Some allow students to get notifications when this has happened. Some just show those announcements on the side of a various LMS system web page. Others allow for various texting capabilities, so that you are reaching your students when you want to reach them.

Finally, various learning management systems will offer elements in discussions that can be threaded or non-threaded, so that students are responding to each other, or they all just sort of exist with in that area. Opportunities for chat rooms where kids can be both reading and discussing alternative forms. Various live Conferencing tools so that all of the students can get together and talk in real time face to face, or the integration of a number of different elements of social media. A lot of learning management systems now incorporate elements of Facebook, Twitter, various wikis and blogs and different RSS feeds that allow students to really engage with all of those elements.

Now that we've reached the end of the lesson, you are able to identify the additional course features and materials that can be seen within learning management systems that help to impact which learning management system you will select.

Now I would like to take just a moment for reflection after looking at the various instructional tools that are available in different learning management systems, what do you think might be the additional feature or material that is most important to the work that you do in your classroom. Feel free to pause the video for just a moment as you think about your answer to this question.

For more information on how to apply what you've learned in this video, please view the Additional Resources section that accompanies this video presentation. The Additional Resources section includes hyperlinks useful for applications of the course material, including a brief description of each resource. That's all we have for right now. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.